A peer-to-peer streaming system generally embodies two components for operation: topology construction and stream delivery. First, for each peer, a system finds and selects the peers that can supply the media. Secondly, the system arranges an effective way to forward the media stream from peer to peer.
A problem with current peer-to-peer streaming protocols is that creating and maintaining an efficient stream delivery topology is hard. Most systems perform well as long as conditions are relatively stable: peers do not join or leave the overlay and network conditions do not vary. However, when conditions change, current systems have difficulties.